“Before there were rankings, rivalries and World Titles… there was the ocean,” Fiji Surfing Association President and Fijian pro surfing pioneer Hannah Bennett said in her speech as she opened stop number eight of the 2026 Championship Tour. “And before there was a Fiji Pro… there were people who knew these waters,” she continued. “People who understood the ocean not simply as a resource, but as a relative, as an ancestor — something we belong to.”

This year’s event holds extra significance for Bennett and the wider Fijian surf community. For the first time, a women’s local trials winner, Ulukilupetea Kurop, is in the draw. This moment has been a long time coming for Bennett, who was the first Fijian surfer to chase the WSL Qualifying Series back in 2015. She was born in the capital of Suva, but spent her early years on her mother’s home island of Rotuma, where she was inspired by her two older sisters to start surfing. She then later moved to Hawaii to finish high school and pursue surfing competitively.

“They were my segue into it,” Hannah reflects on the role her sisters played. “My middle sister Kim was really competitive, and she got into competition and she represented Fiji on a few occasions internationally. So, I really looked up to her in that way.”

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Back then, there were no women’s trials for the Fiji CT at Cloudbreak, so Hannah and Kim used to surf in the men’s trials – always dreaming of becoming the first female Fijian surfer to appear in a Championship Tour event. The women’s professional competitive history at Cloudbreak is relatively short, with the first event held in 2014, running until 2017 when it was dropped and only returned in 2024. The first men’s CT was held in 1999.

“I grew up competing in the men’s wildcard trials because there wasn’t a women’s one, and I wanted it so bad,” Hannah says. “My sister and I, that was our dream together – one day we’re gonna be in the Fiji Pro as a female wild card. And it might not have happened for us personally, but at the end of the day, it’s happening. And it’s so much sicker than we could have imagined. It’s not even about who it is. It’s just getting that opportunity and getting that acknowledgement – honoring locals, honoring women.”

The competitive journey wasn’t easy for Hannah – the hyper-individualism needed to make heats at that level was counterintuitive, going against the community-oriented culture she was raised in.

“I think being the first one to do it, there was a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility,” Hannah recalls. “I think coming from the Pacific, we just have such a different perspective on a lot of things and competitive surfing for me started to feel very self-centered. It was a lot of pressure, but it was also very self-centered and it wasn’t for me, and I found comfort and more passion and drive doing more community stuff.”

Local trials winner Ulukilupetea Kurop in her Round One at the 2026 Fiji Pro.

Cait Miers/World Surf League

After hanging up the WSL rashvest and returning to Suva, Fiji’s capital,...

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